Career Advice To My Younger Self: 'Don’t Wait Until The Timing Is Perfect'

By Chi Onwurah · March 06, 2018

06

March 2018

“MPs did not look like me, and they didn’t sound like me, so I didn’t think it was a possible career path,” says Chi Onwurah, 52, who has been the MP for Newcastle Upon Tyne Central since March 2010. Elected the first time she ran for office with a 40% majority, the Labour MP and now shadow minister for industrial strategy attributes much of her popularity to the fact she is not a career politician – she previously had a successful career as as an engineer and consultant in Denmark, France, the US and Nigeria.

Her childhood self would have been thrilled at her current job. “I would have been really, really happy if someone had told me I would end up here.” she says. “I would have thought they were having me on.”